I am up early. I could not sleep in. I am on fire to write.
The cats yowl and walk on my face at 4:45am these days. They are bored and hungry. Rather than rage at them, I just get up and feed them. When I returned to bed this morning, I planned to go back to sleep. Instead, I thought about advice a peer wrote on a draft at work: “reduce gerunds.”
As a refresher, a gerund is the -ing form of a verb, and it functions as a noun. Planning. Sleeping. Writing. Revising. All words I scratched out as I wrote the first two paragraphs.
I began a book last night that I had to put down twenty pages in. It seemed every sentence included a gerund. Blaspheming. Barreling. Many sentences contained two or three. As verbs they would have jabbed. As nouns, they lost their punch. I struck words with my mental red pen as I read. Eventually I was too distracted to continue. I closed the book and went to sleep.
When I awoke, I thought about gerunds. One of my favorite parts of my job is that I work with talented people who are smart with words. Who respect words. Who love words. Since we are a distributed company, we write. We write all day long. We write in Slack. We write on internal blogs. We write in Google docs. And when we need to publish something important, we review each others’ writing.
I delight when a teammate or a peer circulates a draft for review. The review process surfaces what others see and experience when they read. “Switch these paragraphs for better flow.” “You can cut this entire section.” “Use specific examples.” “Reduce gerunds.”
The reduce gerunds one stuck with me. In part because it was a surprise. I wondered why reduce gerunds? At the time, I had never given gerunds any thought. I did not remember that advice from any of the writing books I’ve read. That’s one of the things that got me back out of bed this morning. I wanted to check The Elements of Style, On Writing Well, The Chicago Manual of Style. I didn’t find anything there.
But the advice holds. When I replace gerunds with infinitive verbs, the work becomes crisper. I still can’t articulate why, but I experience it to be true. In work communications, “I am planning to” feels soft compared with “I plan to.” Maybe because the verb “is” isn’t descriptive while “plan” is. Maybe it’s similar to the passive voice. When you say in active voice, “I made a mistake,” you take ownership, whereas the passive “mistakes were made” distances you from the mistakes. It deflects responsibility.
In personal writing, I often begin my journal entries with, “I am sitting” in whatever chair I happen to write from at that time. Why not, “I sit”? I think it might feel too direct as the writer. “I sit in the Adirondack chair in the garden” feels weird. Too immediate. It is uncomfortable in its intimacy. But that directness, that clarity, that intimacy are exactly why it’s better for the reader.
I woke early, and gerunds kept me awake. Now I sit in the chaise lounge by the living room window. I am restless to write, so I write.
Butterfly Mind 
Generally speaking there is a difference between I write (usually, often, sometimes… but maybe not now) and I am writing (NOW).
What’s wrong with gerunds? They are a natural part of the language. They make it possible to use a verb like a noun: as the subject of a sentence, or as an object of a verb or a preposition.
What sounds better: “To swim is my favourite summer sport” or “swimming is my favourite summer sport”?
And sometimes there is a nuance of difference in the meaning: “I hate to swim across the pond” or “I hate swimmimg across the pond.”
“I’m sick and tired of (to wait???) for you” or “I’m sick and tired of waiting for you.”
It would be better to think about exactly what you’re trying to get across and use all the diversity the English language has than just to wipe one form off your slate in an effort to impress! The result is often stilted.
I like your columns, but sorry, this idea sounds like far-fetched nonsense to me.
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These are great points! Yes, I wouldn’t want to wipe out their use, they absolutely have their place. Since the specific recommendation was to reduce gerunds, I started to pay attention to when I use -ing words. Sometimes they remain the best word choice, other times I can replace them with something better.
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Interesting. I never paid much thought to gerunds either. The next time I write, I shall be more conscious of when I use them!
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-ing verbs have been on my mind recently too — in fact I just had a conversation about them at a wedding this past weekend! Perhaps some of my fellow wedding attendees have gotten similar feedback 😉 As a grammar geek, though, I want to clarify: the “I am planning to” example isn’t a gerund; it’s the present progressive form of the verb. I think the softness you’re sensing is due to the continuous, unfinished feeling the progressive tense carries. A gerund is when the verb actually becomes a noun in the sentence, e.g. “Planning is my favorite activity” or “There’s nothing worse than planning”. I wonder if the feedback was particular to -ing in the progressive participle based on your example here?
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I also realized that -ing verbs can act as participles, too, and then they act as adjectives! All the more reason they are confusing 😂. For the particular feedback, it was a while ago and I might not have used accurate examples here.
I think I remember the feedback being for a bullet list, where I (or whoever we reviewed for) had begun each bullet item with a gerund. It may have been something like, “This person will be responsible for the following: Drafting proposals, Reviewing emails, Tracking metrics.” (Are those gerunds? I need to learn basic grammar 😬 ). The revision would look like, “This person will perform the following tasks: Draft proposals, review emails, track metrics.”
If nothing else, the revision removes characters to make it shorter. I also find that when I look for -ing verbs, I sometimes find a stronger word or clearer way to construct a sentence.
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I love the fact that you were discussing gerunds at a wedding. You must have some interesting friends.
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You’ve made some excellent points here and I admire your bravery in writing about grammar. It always results in a lot of discussion! I agree gerunds can often weaken your writing and make you sound hesitant.
Whilst you have the attention of some grammarians, can someone tell me why my editing software always tells me to remove the word “that”? As in, I agree that gerunds can weaken your writing. Why is this wrong?
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